Vicki Rock’s review of The Waiting

(Due to a technical issue, Vicki’s review this week is temporarily posted in the blog, where the Library Lady / webmaster can post from her phone. It will move when she has access to her computer again.)

“The Waiting,” by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company, 416 pages, Oct. 15, 2024.

Renée Ballard is a detective with the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit. She is surfing before work and when she gets back to her vehicle, she finds that her badge, gun, and ID were stolen. She can’t report the theft without giving her enemies in the police department ammunition to end her career.

Ballard is the only detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit. The others are retired detectives who volunteer their time. The unit clears, on average, three cold cases a month. Then they get a DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. But Nicholas Purcell, the arrested man, is only 24, so the genetic link must be familial: His father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror.

When Ballard tries to find her stolen property, her mission draws her into unexpected danger. With no choice but to go outside the department for help, she calls on Harry Bosch, who was her mentor.

At the same time, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit: Bosch’s daughter Maddie, now a patrol officer. The reason behind the thefts is bigger than Ballard first thinks. And Maddie has reasons of her own for joining the unit.

Connelly’s writing is precise. His narrative style allows the tension to build. The characters are good and their relationships are natural. This is book six of the Ballard and Bosch series.

I rate it five out of five stars.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the advance reader's edition of this book was provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for a review.